Escape
by Nyxicillin
Summary: After months of planning, Ivan is finally ready to make his escape from the Abbey. But there's someone more important than him that Yuri's not ready to give up on, and Ivan's torn between helping out one last time or being the ruthless snake he was trained to be. ['Chance' spin-off]
**Disclaimer:** Beyblade is copyright Takao Aoki.
 **Warnings:** Angst, violence and mentions of abuse.  
 **Note:** Using original names. Ivan-centric spin-off from 'Chance', set at the end of chapter 30.

* * *

Ivan shuts his eyes and grips the edge of the table as his mind flares, the world shrinks and a web of tunnels folds out in his head like some crazy strobe-lit blueprint, burying images of his blade. He shakes his head and tries to focus, tries to think about the repairs he's doing _now_ and _not_ what he's hoping to do later.

But then it's gone. Just as quickly as they appeared the maps vanish, the world expands again and Ivan is gasping for air as if he'd been drowning.

He hates the flares, hates them more than anything else in the damned Abbey, but he knows they're also the reason he's survived so long, the reason he's still able to walk and the reason he's allowed in the engineering suite, doing something he actually _enjoys_ doing and taking his mind off everything. If only just for a moment.

He knows that maybe if he could control them better they wouldn't be so bad. He has to be careful what he thinks, what he says, what other people say to him, as even the slightest suggestion or the smallest hint at something can be enough to send his thoughts haywire, spiralling nowhere and everywhere and so out of control that Ivan forgets how to do even the most basic things like breathe.

Whatever Valkov did to his head, he hates it. But he doesn't wish he didn't have it.

Ivan takes a seat at the table again, Wyborg's parts lying forgotten in front of him, and tries to remember what he was like before. Before the Abbey, before Valkov cracked him open and played with his brain. He tries to remember a family, childhood, names and faces of people he knew—because he must have known _somebody_ —but as usual, he comes up with a complete blank.

Nothing. Not even the ghost of someone's voice. As if he hadn't even existed before he was seven years old, because that's as far back as his memory goes; whatever happened before that has been wiped clean.

With a sigh, he doubles over to smack his forehead on the tabletop, partially to make sure he's definitely awake, definitely real, but also partially in a futile attempt to shake off the chains or whatever is stopping him from accessing that part of his mind. Because he knows _something_ is, just isn't sure what.

It doesn't work, of course it doesn't, so instead Ivan rubs his right hand over his face and starts to pick up the abandoned pieces of his blade with his left, slotting them back together on autopilot because he'll be damned if he can remember why he'd taken them apart in the first place.

He misses his laptop, he realises absently.

The ache in his stomach finally gets too strong to ignore and Ivan checks the clock the engineers had given him. It's breakfast, Yuri should be in the food hall by now, and Ivan has some convincing to do. Nobody spares him a second glance as he makes his way through the Abbey—he thinks he's alone until in his peripheral vision he spots a uniform skulking behind him—he growls mutely, shoves his fists in his pockets, and imagines putting a bullet in the man's head.

Yuri's sat in his usual seat, or at least he _thinks_ it's Yuri but his hair is short and black and his face is drawn into a scowl that looks more desperate than intimidating. He shrugs, his shadow finally backs off and he glides silently to the bench.

For some reason Ivan's stress-addled mind is still stuck in a loop around the idea that he misses his laptop, so instead of actually greeting his captain or asking how he's doing or what happened to his hair, he launches head-first into a massive rant; how do they expect him to work without his computer? What do they think they're going to find on it? Why do they even bother letting him help if they aren't willing to give him the proper equipment? Why the hell did the stupid guard that came to find him and steal his laptop away also think it was necessary to beat him into a pulp, even though he'd already surrendered?

Of course, Yuri doesn't have answers to any of his half-shouted, half-whined questions and Ivan isn't surprised. He sits there, panting in the aftermath of the hateful rage he's just blurted and waits for Yuri to give him a sign that he's actually noticed him.

"Come with me." He doesn't say where because he hopes that Yuri still has enough sense to know what the words mean. Yuri snaps his head up, wide unfocused eyes flicking from the bench to Ivan to whatever is behind him and back again. Ivan swallows a spoonful of gruel and the lump of sand in his mouth and his voice sounds pathetic. "Yura, _come with me_. Tonight, an hour after curfew. Outside the engineering suite."

The blank, far-away, _haunted_ look that sits on Yuri's face doesn't suit him, Ivan thinks.

Only then he realises he shouldn't have thought at all as another flare kicks in and Ivan's back in the vent over the labs. He sees Yuri's shoulders tense and has to stamp down on the desire to comfort his captain, to try and ease the distress that's so clear on his face and tell him that he isn't the only one who's had their brain experimented on, that he knows how Yuri feels, that he's been through the same things himself.

He can't say a word— _won_ _'t_ say a word—because all he'll end up doing is revealing that he's a product of Valkov's insane ideas, that he's been designed and manufactured, _created_. That he's just a machine, a kid with a computer in his head, not Ivan Papov, not the clever engineering genius that Yuri and everyone else thinks he is.

That he's only still here thanks to Valkov, and not thanks to his own hard work. That he's only survived for so long thanks to Valkov, and not thanks to his own blood, sweat and tears.

Because even though Ivan knows that's not true—even though he knows he would've been killed or maimed or shot _years_ ago if it wasn't for his own intuition and desire to live—sometimes that's how it feels.

And he knows that's how everyone else would see it. After all, it's so much easier to be jealous of someone than to be happy for them, especially in the Abbey.

"I can't." Yuri answers eventually and the only thing that spins through Ivan's mind is 'weak, weak, _weak_ _'_. He watches Yuri fight himself and already knows why but asks anyway, rubs salt in the open wound in his heart. "I can't, Vanya… I can't leave him here."

For a split-second Ivan feels that jealousy; no two boys have ever been as close as Yuri and Boris. But he blinks it away like it's meaningless—it isn't, but his mind has filed it away to mull over and scream about later—and says the worst thing he can. "What if it's too late?"

He's not bitter, but does find himself wondering what it would feel like to know someone and have someone know him as well as Yuri and Boris do.

When Yuri's eyes fill with misery and he falters, Ivan notices the way his throat bobs as if he's about to cry. He opens his mouth without even realising. "We can't stay here anymore, we can't, we need to leave." _You can_ _'t help anyone now_ , he wants to say. He tries convincing himself that he's only thinking of helping the other boys in the Abbey but he can't quite stop himself from seeing it as a ruse to get closer to Yuri. An attempt to make his captain like him.

As if he hasn't already done enough for him.

Because who's he to say what Yuri thinks of him? Whether he sees him as a friend or a tool or something in between; Yuri's smiled at him before, calls him 'Vanya', but it's been so long since Ivan had a friend that he can't tell the difference anymore.

Yuri's apologising—for what, Ivan's not even sure—and wishing him luck as he gets to his feet. It's not good enough, Yuri's not going to leave with him and Ivan knows he should probably say something else at this point but he can't. Instead his hand is digging in his pocket for the key to his safebox as his brain is miles ahead, planning and plotting and scheming and piling up ideas and possibilities and everything else should be doing right now. The things _he_ can do because of what he is, what he has, things that nobody else could achieve.

Of course, his captain's running with a one-track mind so he doesn't see what's in Ivan's head, what he knows is flashing through his eyes. He doesn't see the opportunity that Ivan's holding out to him, because he's only thinking of Boris.

When Yuri leaves, Ivan closes his eyes so that he doesn't have to watch that opportunity shatter when he drops it. He imagines it crunch under his feet though, imagines the shards embedding in the soles of his boots where he'll be stamping them into the ground wherever he walks.

Part of him imagines putting a bullet in _Boris_ _'_ head.

He wonders when he'd stopped being a nice person.

Wonders if he's ever been one.

* * *

It's easy enough to find Gorbachev and immediately the engineer is on the defensive, leaping from his chair and knocking the bottle off the table with his knee. Ivan spares a glance down, watches the contents spill over the floor, and somewhere in the back of his consciousness he feels that it's a waste.

Because if there was one thing that could combat the flares, it was vodka. Just a sip, just enough to feel the burn and drag him back to the present, to ground him.

Gorbachev goes from stammering apologies to laughing, apparently relieved that it's only Ivan walking in and not some trigger-happy guard. Or worse, Levitsky. When he talks, his voice comes out as a garbled slur that Ivan's so used to now that he doesn't have trouble understanding. It's pretty damn obvious though that he's gone through more than just the bottle on the floor.

The engineer asks how he can help, and it takes all of Ivan's willpower not to just spill the security code and indirectly arm him with a rifle and ammunition. Just get it over and done with, his mind is screaming, playing on the edge of the flare that had given him the code in the first place.

He doesn't, manages to thankfully squash the desire, because he's trusted that information to Yuri for now even though he _knows_ Yuri doesn't have the courage to pull it off. Not now he has so much to lose.

Ivan wonders if he should have realised that sooner.

He plays at innocent, looks Gorbachev in the eye and lies, not that he's in any state to see through it. He suggests a rumour, small talk that has spread around the Abbey like wildfire; he's heard things, wonders if they're true. Gorbachev is, as usual, so drunk that he's more than happy to comply, and ten minutes later Ivan's walking back through the engineering suite knowing precisely where Boris Kuznetsov is being kept, precisely who's keeping him there and, more importantly, _precisely_ how to get to him.

As he fingers Gorbachev's dog-eared access card in his pocket, part of him, the selfish part that he's been trying to ignore just as much as he knows he relies on it, wants to skip telling Yuri completely and go be the hero himself.

A darker part, one he wasn't entirely sure he had, the part where anger and envy and hate mashes together to make something he never wants to meet, wants to skip telling _anyone_ and pretend he knows nothing.

Let him die.

Take away the one thing holding Yuri back.

The one thing Yuri doesn't want to lose.

Would that make him a monster? He hopes not, but he knows Yuri wouldn't look at him the same way again, and that's not what he wants.

* * *

Training passes by like a blur, one second he's in engineering, sat at a wooden desk holding a pencil in his left hand and staring down at a sheet of paper covered in diagrams and notes and annotations and problems that even Biovolt's greatest minds can't solve, the next he's caught up in the vice-like grip of another flare and the words and numbers have jumped off the page and into his head, twisting and morphing and working themselves out, the answers flickering before him like insects. They look so real that he's almost sure he could reach out and grab them.

He runs into Vasily afterwards, entirely by accident—not expecting it but not entirely surprised either—catching the dark-haired enigma creeping around the tunnels that lead to the lab. Vasily confirms Boris is down there, just as Gorbachev had said, and his explanation is that Valkov doesn't trust Boris not to ruin the inspection. Ivan's explanation is that they are waiting for him to die, but he doesn't say it.

As long as Boris is alive, Yuri won't ever see the opportunity Ivan's trying to give him. The one that's still stuck in the soles of his boots.

And maybe that's for the best, because if he has something to lose then he's not going to take risks. Ivan's not sure whether Yuri would survive for long without Boris—without something to live for—and as much as he _wants_ Yuri to see him, to see what he's offering, he doesn't want to kill him.

He's sneaking through the corridors, on his way back from indirectly pleading Vasily to stick around later because Yuri needs all the help he can get, when a hand closes on his neck. Before he knows it he's being half-marched, half-dragged back to his room. The guard who's watching him—damned if he can remember his name—is talking, shouting, berating him for being an embarrassment, accusing him of things that Ivan had never intended to do. Or maybe he did, it's difficult to understand what he's thinking when a flare kicks in. He can see the man's mouth moving but he's got no idea what the words really mean.

The baton cracks when it slams down, or maybe that's the sound of bone breaking, and pain spreads from his shoulder to his fingertips and toes, bursting on his back, his ribs, his forearms. He can already see the bruises forming even though they haven't yet, great purple blotches where blood has welled up under his skin, and he isn't sure if he knows _why_ he's being punished, but the guard doesn't stop.

Doesn't stop until Ivan's collapsed to the floor.

Until he's writhing in agony.

Until he can barely breathe.

The door to his room slams, and Ivan's not even sure whether he feels cold or numb or what, because he can't get his brain to function.

When he wakes up, it's night-time and the guard is gone but it doesn't matter because Ivan can't actually move. He has to, because he can't escape if he can't move. His fingers twitch as he tests them and that alone is enough to send a white-hot spark shooting through his body. He does it again and again, lifts his arm and rolls his shoulder, throws himself over onto his back, _anything_ to keep that pain running through him.

Because pain means he's alive, means he's awake, gives him something to focus on and it's enough to get him sitting up, panting wetly from exertion and wiping blood from his lip with his sleeve.

Internal damage, he thinks, because he's probed his mouth with his tongue and can't find a cut that would explain the blood. It's not good, doesn't take a doctor to tell him that, but he's got no choice but to work through it. Because he's got a security code trapped in his head that's begging to be told. Because Gorbachev's card is burning in his pocket. Because he knows Yuri won't do anything with it and he flat-out _refuses_ to let everything he's gone through to get this far be wasted.

And then he's on his feet, wobbling but not falling. His launcher feels heavier than usual on his shoulder but Wyborg feels warmer in his hand. At the back of his mind, behind the jumble of thoughts, behind the building pressure of another flare, he can feel the viper, see him coiled tight, and imagines himself in the centre of that coil, safe, protected.

A quick glance around the room through one open eye and one bruised and swollen, and Ivan's out the door and won't be coming back.

His workroom is dark and for the first time in his life Ivan can't wait to leave it. The clock on the table says curfew and Ivan slides his fingers under the drawer, finds the hidden latch and flips open the base. He tapes the card to the map he'd scrawled out on a spare scrap of paper in training and drops it in, yanking off his headband as an afterthought and leaving it deliberately in view. He snaps the latch so nobody can get in without his key.

When he walks out, he wonders whether he should've told Yuri what he was leaving for him, whether he'll risk finding out, but it's far too late now.

Gorbachev, slumped over his desk, too wasted to even bother pretending he isn't drinking, welcomes him with a red-cheeked half-smile and a shake of the nearly empty bottle in his hand. Ivan accepts the wordless offer and takes a gulp. The burn in his throat freezes him for a second before it lets go, and as much as he wants to feel it again, he knows he can't. Enough to help mask the pain, not enough to blur his intuition or mess with his mind.

The numbers fall from his lips easier than he thought they ever would, considering that Gorbachev might not be waking up tomorrow, and perhaps that _does_ make him a monster, but it's necessary, he reasons, because he needs to get out. Nine little digits. The lock on the storage room is the same as the one on his door to freedom.

Gorbachev leaves, as he should. The alarm blares, as it should. The thundering sound of sprinting guards and the distant chatter of gunfire echo in the tiny cupboard Ivan's hiding in.

He slips on his gloves and climbs up to the top of the shelving unit, slithering along until he finds the bag he'd hidden weeks ago. With practised ease his launcher comes apart, and Ivan tips out the tools he's stolen from the engineering suite. Wire cutters, pliers, his screwdriver set. He drags his belt from his bag, clips it on, shoves the tools in the pouches and zips the bag up again, launcher parts safely inside.

The grate above his head is easy enough to take apart; the two screws drop into his open palm in seconds and the grate swings down on its hinges. A length of string through the slats, and he pulls the grate back up behind him once he's crouched in the vent. He pulls the torch from his waist and flicks it on as the light filtering under the door below him is blocked out, holding it between his teeth as he ties knots in the string and smothers them with electrical tape. It won't hold forever, and if anyone with an ounce of intelligence bothers to look closely they'll notice the string poking through the ceiling, but by then he'll be long gone.

A square of paper over the torch, torch taped to his hand, and Ivan's crawling through the vent like a rodent, hoping that just this once, a flare will kick in with the right information at the right time. Because he remembers how to get outside, but he's not convinced he remembers the guard rotation and the direction of the spotlights around the tower. The slim pattern of shadow he's going to have to dive through to get to the tunnel he needs to use.

His crawl takes him over the labs again, parallel to the space he'd been squashed in with Yuri, and he pauses for a moment to look through the grate and take in a different view of the room beneath him. There's a desk just under where he believes the second grate is, an empty chair out in the middle of the floor. The scientists are gone—the alarm is still ringing but it's a dull, muted sound where Ivan's blocked it out—they should all be in the food hall. Employees all together so that they can be protected, because there's strength in numbers, the boys sent to their rooms where if danger found them, nobody but their terrified neighbours would hear them scream.

Not so much survival of the fittest, more survival of the favoured.

Ivan shakes his head and presses onward.

He shifts around until he can see the clock on the far wall, yanking a battered stopwatch from the side-pocket of his bag. The clock hits half-past and Ivan thumbs the button on the watch; it'll take a little working out, but it's the only way he has of telling the time and it's enough.

As he reaches the exit he needs that opens out into a dimly lit corridor, he flicks off the torch, pockets it, and flexes the pliers in his fingers. There's a twitch of pain somewhere on his left, below his ribcage, and he smooths it out with his free hand. The vodka's wearing off too soon, he realises. Ivan steels himself and clenches his jaw, jamming the pliers over one of the slats and twisting and turning until it breaks loose. The corridor's damp and the grate is riddled with rust. Easy; a big enough gap for his wrist, screwdriver out, and he's spilling onto the ground.

The corridor leads nowhere important, nobody will notice the damage to the wall.

He hoists his bag back onto his shoulders with a wince—should have drank a little more—and then he's taking the corridors in a sprint; left, right, two lefts, the directions in his head dissolve into letters and then numbers, and numbers become a code that takes him only seconds to memorise.

He skids to a halt by a concealed door, nothing more than a handle set into the stonework, and he presses his ear to it and listens. Nothing. The wind outside, the spatter of rain, his breathing echoing from the walls around him. The gunfire's stopped and he can't hear the guards.

For the briefest second, he wonders who survived, whether Gorbachev made it. But it's a worthless thought; he can't change the past.

There's the smallest slither of shade to the left of the door, because the guards in the tower are so focused on the disruption inside the Abbey that they aren't focused on their jobs outside. Ivan can see the main spotlight high-up on the balcony but it's sweeping an arc around the main entrance, aiming in the opposite direction to him.

He slips through the gap in the doorway and eases it shut, settling into a crouch in the dark. The next part's tricky, anxiety wells in his chest and his heart beats loudly in his ears. He smothers the feeling, locks it in the back of his head somewhere and swallows the key. The display on the stopwatch flicks through seconds quicker than it should; he's wasting time.

The guard rota changes on the hour, but Ivan knows they get slack in their last ten minutes, chatting about their wives and families, holiday plans and who saw the hockey match last week. Ivan could walk straight up to the tower and nobody would notice.

If it wasn't for the rest of the lights, that is.

It's still a risk, because if the next shift arrives early then he's ridiculously outnumbered. He's got an eight minute window; not as much as he wanted, but it will have to do.

He spends two of those precious minutes hunched by the door, steadying his breathing whilst he balances on the sharp edge of a flare, a third minute unpacking and slotting his launcher together, twisting Wyborg into the lock and flicking out the stand.

And then his mind slips and he's tumbling down into a space that's both pitch black and bursting with colour, freezing cold and sweltering hot, his arms and legs feel like they've come apart from his body and the air gets trapped in his lungs.

The world expands and slants sideways, his vision somersaults so the sky is down and the ground is up. His line of sight narrows to a pinprick and suddenly it's there.

The flare kicks in.

And then he sees everything.

Garish neon shapes dance before his eyes, casting halos around the patterns the spotlights have painted on the floor. Shadows dance between them, merging and splitting and coming together again in a clear line, as if someone has run out in front of him and drawn a path through the maze of lights with a bright marker pen.

Ivan catches his reflection in the metal cover of his launcher and his eyes are a freakish red.

He breathes, takes aim, the path's locked in his head and Wyborg can see it too, knows what he needs to do. It's Wyborg that counts down from three, because he's going to be the lead.

His blade shoots out, a bright yellow aura shimmering in it's wake, and Ivan waits for one, two seconds at the most before leaping after it, looping his launcher over his shoulder and focusing his eyes and his mind on Wyborg's spark before him because all he needs to do now is follow.

Wyborg jerks left and Ivan ducks his body under brambles to avoid the arc of the main spotlight. Wyborg ups his speed as he approaches a wall, spinning so fast that he vanishes before he finishes the climb, but Ivan can still see him, _feel_ him, and he spots the yellow glow on the other side, plants his hands on the top of the wall and throws his body over.

A sprint over open ground, Ivan's feet slipping in damp leaves and mud. From the corner of his eye he notices the trees in the distance, the wind rocking the branches and casting eerie shadows. Wyborg darts to the right, down a dip in the ground and Ivan slides in after, slams his feet against the wall of the guard tower. Dirt sticks to his legs and back, itches his neck and creeps up his sleeves.

He rolls, clutching at thin air for a split-second until his hand closes over Wyborg—the metal burning his skin through his gloves—and then he's grappling with the ground to pull himself through the tiny hole in the base of the tower, hanging on to the ledge and holding his breath as he drops, landing heavily in a crouch.

Water splashes into his boots and pain tears through his ribcage from the impact, leaving him slumped against the wall, blinking tears from his eyes until it starts to ebb.

But he can't wait.

He stands for a minute at the most, definitely no longer, giving his head a chance to settle as the flare fades and allowing the pace his heart's racing at to slow down until he no longer feels it pounding in his throat.

He's not really sure how far the tunnel stretches for, let alone where it actually leads, but he's had months to think it over and he's pretty sure it will at least take him under the iron fence that's kept him prisoner for so long. He spares another lonely thought for Yuri, wants to wonder what he's doing, whether he's found the card and the map and Ivan's last favour to him, but he doesn't have time.

His feet squelch in grime as he marches forward, slipping against the rounded walls of the tunnel. He doesn't think about what he's walking through, about what he's getting on his gloves as he feels his way forward, about the stench that's clogging his nostrils, because sometimes you have to make sacrifices, have to compromise. There's nothing he _wouldn_ _'t_ consider doing if it meant winning his freedom. In the Abbey, everyone and everything has a price.

Ivan's free hand jumps to his torch as the darkness becomes even darker, but he doesn't want to risk giving himself away. Instead he takes baby steps, feeling the ground in front of him with his toes before putting his foot down and committing. If he falls down a crack, breaks his leg, nobody will hear his cries for help. Nobody will find him.

Probably not even for years.

And even if they did, who would care?

He shakes his head violently, imagines knocking the irritating thoughts and emotions out of his ears. Emotions are a risk, the good ones and the bad. A liability. Trust too much and you get killed. Hate too much and you get killed. Be neutral, don't take sides. Even better, _play_ both sides, play them against each other if you can gain from it. But _never_ pick just one.

He has, though, and that was a mistake. He's helped Yuri and gained nothing from it, hasn't even asked for anything. He wasn't playing Yuri against anyone, wasn't acting on some secret agenda and hoping to selfishly benefit. Unless you counted Biovolt as a whole, of course; helping Yuri was helping to bring down Biovolt.

But it was still a mistake.

What will Yuri think when he finds out he's escaped? Ivan's not sure he wants to know, because he's certain it'll be somewhere between anger and disappointment and disbelief and abandonment and none of those things are what he wants to see on his captain's face when he looks at him.

It's too late now, anyway, because Ivan can see a glimmer of light in the distance and he knows that he's either heading towards his freedom or his death. Either way, he might never see Yuri again.

The thought hurts enough to squeeze the air from his lungs and make his legs freeze up.

He shouldn't care, he's well aware of that, but he can't help it.

Because even though he's tried to believe otherwise, even though he's tried to hide behind denial, Yuri's still his friend. Officially Yuri's his captain, yes, but somehow he's also become his _friend_. Ivan blinks dumbly at nothing and weighs the thought in his mind, rolls the word on his tongue as he whispers it to the shadows around him.

He tries to think back, tries to work out when things changed, at what point they went from being teammates with little reason to speak, to trusting each other with secrets, with their lives. It just sort of happened, he realises, curiosity piqued by the fact that it doesn't bother him. Not as much as it should, not as much as it would've done in the past or had Yuri been anyone else.

Which leads him to wonder, maybe, _maybe_ , he shouldn't have left Yuri behind.

Because friends shouldn't leave friends behind.

But it really is too late.

The light's coming from a dead-end, a heavy grate set in the ceiling of the tunnel at the top of a rusted metal ladder. Ivan drops to one knee, ignores the wetness soaking though his clothes, and carefully balances his bag on top of his other leg so he can zip the pieces of his launcher into it. He's not stupid; if the ladder leads up to the city streets like he hopes, he's not going to blend in well carrying a rifle on his back.

The ladder creaks under his weight and the bottom rungs snap off, the movement jars his injured shoulder where he's got his hands tight around the metal further up. He heaves himself to the next rung, arms burning from the strain, and slowly starts his ascent.

At the grate he stops, mentally flicking through the tools in his belt. None of them will help him shift it, so instead he turns on the ladder, jams his fingers into the holes in the grate behind his head and launches all his weight forwards. The grate stubbornly stays put.

He tries again to no avail, and again, the third time climbing one rung higher on the ladder pushing up with his legs as he tries to work the grate free.

It shifts, finally, but it takes another two attempts to make a big enough gap for him to climb through. He pokes his head out first, partially to make sure he's not crawling onto a road and partially to see whether he's actually on the other side of the iron fence or not.

He can't really tell, but there's tall buildings to his left and right that he doesn't recognise—he's in a dark alleyway from the looks of it—and the relief that floods his body is so sudden and so intense that he almost goes limp and boneless drops off the ladder.

The blare of a horn and a muffled shout in the distance are enough to keep him in reality, to keep him alert and functioning, because the last thing he wants is to get caught, especially when he's managed to get so far. He sits on the ground and uses his feet to push the grate back down. The clang resounds from the walls, but he's sure nobody's noticed.

Something slides out of his pocket when he stands up and he bends to collect the stopwatch. It's been nearly an hour since he set it in the vent above the labs. It's taken an hour to escape.

It's well after curfew now, somebody will have noticed he's not on his bunk. They'll check the other rooms on his floor first, maybe even the storage cupboards. His work room will be next, then they'll sweep the engineering suite. When he's not found, the guards will be on alert again, they'll search the Abbey floor to ceiling and ceiling to floor.

But they won't think of checking outside, not for a while.

And they won't think of checking the tunnel he's used that runs from the guard tower under the fence. Because he shouldn't even have been able to get _close_ to the guard tower, let alone know the tunnel's there.

He creeps to the end of the alleyway and peers out onto the street. A man and a woman stumble along the path to his right, her heels clacking on the paving slabs. A car swerves around the bend, tires shrieking as they skid.

Ivan inhales the damp air, a hint of smoke, and the smell of cooked meat that he guesses is coming from the restaurant over the road. The streetlight above his head is dim and flickering, but in the distance the lights look brighter, more welcoming.

Shrugging his bag further onto his shoulders, Ivan swipes his hands through his hair, tangling them in the muck and grime that's stuck and he hopes he looks more like a child living on the streets than a boy who's just escaped from hell.

Ivan takes a deep breath and can't mask the the grin that spreads over his face. He's cold and dirty and alone and aching—bleeding still—and he has no clue which direction to walk in…

But he's _free_.


End file.
